Wireless Access Points (APs) can consist of one or more radios that operate on different frequency bands. In some wireless networks, it is necessary for access points to communicate with neighboring APs that operate on different channels. A typical example of this mode of communication would be in wireless mesh networks that comprise mesh APs that communicate to a central switch (aka controller) via neighboring nodes through a multi-hop routing tree. For example, to establish the routing tree, mesh APs scan the different frequency channels looking for neighboring mesh APs which they can pick as a parent for the routing tree being built. The parent selection algorithm selects the best neighbor based on parameters such as distance to the controller, link SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio), etc. Once a parent is selected, the mesh AP operates only on this channel, which is referred to as the base operating channel. Any channel that is not the same as the base channel is an off-channel. Fixing the base operating channel restricts the ability of an AP to locate neighbors on off-channels because the AP can only assess neighbors on the same channel. During this time, it is possible that newer, better neighbors operating on the off-channels have commenced operation. To maintain optimal routing paths, it is desirable that these new neighbors on the other channels be detected. The mesh AP can scan in the background to detect new neighbors on off-channels. This technique is referred to as background scanning. With background scanning, mesh APs go off-channel for about 50 ms and look for neighbors on an off-channel by sending neighbor probe packets. Although, this feature helps solve the problem of finding neighbors on different channels, it introduces performance related issues: (a) the period of non-operation on the original channel can cause loss of packets that were transmitted to the AP, and also reduces the effective transmission bandwidth of the AP; and (b) on DFS (Dynamic Frequency Selection) channels, it is not possible to send out neighbor probe packets unless the channel has been determined to be “radar-safe”. For example, due to regulatory requirements some channels (such as Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers “IEEE” 802.11a compatible DFS channels) are monitored for a predetermined time period before they can be used (for example at least 60 seconds for IEEE 802.11a channels). Because of the latter limitation, background scanning passively listens for neighbor updates that are sent pro-actively every half-a-second. For example, if background scanning parameters are set so that the radio goes off-channel every 5 secs for 50 ms, and pro-active updates are sent every 500 ms, simple calculations show that this would require 43 off-channel scans in order to receive an update within the 50 ms window with 99% probability, rendering the background scanning feature in DFS channels ineffective.